Energy select committee adds to chorus calling for action on storage

The Energy and Climate Change select committee (ECC) has used its final report to add to growing pressure on government to address the regulatory barriers holding back greater deployment of storage technologies.

Following last month’s decision to scrap the committee, the report has concluded three of its ongoing inquiries including its analysis of ‘the energy revolution’, which sought to identify issues holding out innovative technologies including storage.

It has reiterated the committee’s previous calls for government to move quickly on improving the regulatory framework impacting storage by creating a separate asset class for the technology. It claims this would remove the current effect of double-charging of balancing charges, where the technology is charged once for consuming the electricity they store, and then for supplying it back to the grid.

The end-user is then also charged for consumption which, as inquiry witness Dr Jill Cainey, director of the Electricity Storage Network, claimed means “everyone pays double and that has a material cost to projects”.

Providing a new asset class along with a clear definition for storage is therefore considered “a matter of urgency” by the ECC.